Over the last days before our Christmas break, we had a lot of fun doing special Christmas activities. We got to shop at the “Christmas Store” in the gym, choosing special gifts with the help of our big buddies…

It’s the time of year that we need to let Santa know we are thinking of him. Together we decided that when we wrote to Santa we needed to thank him for last year’s gift, say something nice and then tell him what we were hoping to get this year. The students worked very hard on this; it’s an important document to get right. We mailed the letters to Santa, but first we took a picture of them so that you could see them on their blogs. Be sure to check to see their heart’s desires and their developing skills.

What a great breakfast we had together this morning! Yum, yum. Thank you parents for providing the fruit and cheese. We also had a bunny make an appearance in our classroom and everyone got to find out what a bunny actually feels like.

This month, we made a trip to the Art Museum to work with clay. After the clay was fired, we painted and glazed it, then added ribbon as a finishing touch. These wonderful Santa ornaments are the result.

Thank you Mrs. Tolley for taking the pictures and helping the students to finish!

This week we are learning about celebrations. We’ve discovered that some of our celebrations are the same as others in our class and some are different. After we read a story about Hanukkah (which NONE of us celebrate), we tried potato pancakes. Almost all of the students gave them a thumbs up.

Later, we Skyped with Ms Lirenman’s class in Surrey who taught us a lot about Hanukkah, including the dreidel.

They lit a menorah for us to see. We wondered why the candle flame looked like this. Do you know?

Just look at the terrific clay Santa ornaments we made at the Art Museum! Next week, after they have been fired, we’ll paint them so we can take them home for Christmas.

Today was also the annual Christmas Store. For 50 cents, the students could purchase new or gently used gifts for each of their family members. What a thrill for the students to be able to purchase their gifts themselves and to get them wrapped to take home for Christmas.

On St. Patrick’s Day, after reading a book about some things that were more important than a pot of gold, we discussed what our “pot of gold” would be. Later, the children tweeted about #mypotofgold. I have embedded the tweets below. You’ll have to click through to see the tweets from our class (they are at the end) as others saw our hashtag and got involved. I have deleted a few tweets that were not primary friendly.